Wounds & death

At 0 hit points you're unconscious and bleeding, make a CON check to determine if you’re still breathing. If it’s a failure, make a new character while your friends split your gear among themselves.

With a success, you go back to 1 HP and can be healed, but you’ve sustained a grievous wound: you lose a level to represent the loss in abilities and stamina. Remove two advances (not necessarily you latest ones—talk to the Referee about what makes the most sense). Reroll your hit dice if you lost any.

Lost advances are recovered by earning experience and levelling up again. Discuss with your Referee about the specifics of your injures. They can make some activities more difficult for you until you are fully recovered.

Resting and eating

When you take a few minutes away from danger, have a breather and a swig of mead, your armour can be used again (remember, it may have been damaged).

If you have food, you can roll the corresponding Δ to recover hit points equal to the result. You can only do so every few hours. After a decent night’s sleep, you recover one hit die worth of hit points. Roll with advantage if you had a hot meal and slept in a comfy bed, and with disadvantage if you had to make do with roots, or if your camp site was particularly dreary.

Stamina and Sanity: Risk dice can model characters inner resources in a horrific situation, a duel of wits, or a wrestling match. Just give everyone a Δ based off the relevant stat: Δ12 for 18 or more, Δ10 for 15-17, Δ8 for 11-14, Δ6 for 7-10, and Δ4 for 6 or less. Step the die up for relevant traits. Roll the dice when something relevant happens and describe the effects accordingly. When the resource is gone, the character goes mad, falls over with exhaustion or gives up.

Magical healing

This is entirely up to the table, depending on your collective taste, and the kind of setting you want to have. Potions can be freely bought anywhere and clerical healers dispense their magic for copper pieces. But if you want to keep it old school, I recommend that you make magical healing rare. Hit points should be a carefully managed resource.

If magical healing is allowed, a typical spell should cost 3 HP per d8 of healing, with a limit to 1d8 per character level. The Referee may forbid the spellcaster from healing themselves to prevent abuse (p.30 for magic rules.)

Long Rests and Referee Turns

Finally, here is a handy rule I stole from my friend Grümph. When you feel that the characters are too spent to go on, you can ask the Referee for a long rest. If you spend a couple of days in a safe place with access to supplies, you get back all your Risk Dice, hit points, etc. Even some equipment. You can start afresh.

Meanwhile, the Referee gets a free turn to basically do what they would do between adventures. They plan their factions’ next moves, think about what the local monsters are up to, and generally make the world go round.

So while your characters were resting, the dungeon guard got reinforcements, the goblins may have left their camp, the talks between the thieves guild and the river pirates might have gone sour... And that story about the Dead Duchess planning to raise an army of zombies? Well, they're on their way already.